Bridge construction or bridge deck replacement has been a large and important industry all over the world since the advent of the era of the automobile. Road construction formerly was mapped out with the main consideration being a route which required only cut and fill as the limiting factor, since bridge construction was avoided wherever possible. As a result, the super cross-country highway was slow in becoming a primary long-distance transportation capability. When it became obvious that interstate and cross-country vehicle transportation was every bit as important as rail and airline transportation, the road engineering field set about to avoid bridge construction being a limiting factor in the cross-country road systems. Instead of being a limiting factor, bridge construction could be looked upon as a necessary "evil", but still a limiting factor with respect to both costs and the time required for construction. Furthermore, the repair of bridges also became an avoided maintenance requirement in the field of road upkeep. In other words, road repair was correctly recognized as an absolute necessity in maintaining the vehicular road form of transportation, but bridge repair was not considered with the same urgency because of the difficulties.
In terms of bridge construction, as it presently exists, the weak member is often the concrete deck slab, rather than the main beam members of the bridge support. Deck slabs must be sound enough to support the loads presented by the weight of moving vehicles, and if such slabs are worn away enough not to offer such support, they should be replaced. During replacement, traffic over the bridge could be completely disrupted during the time it takes to replace the slab. With conventional methods of bridge deck slab replacement, unreliable quality of such slabs often results and/or there is such high construction cost and traffic disruption that the replacement produces problems.